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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silveras" data-source="post: 1242102" data-attributes="member: 6271">This thread is a spin-off from the "AEG Empire, How is it" thread. The reason this answer is so long is because that goes to the heart of the rules in BR, and I will need to summarize many of them to make the answer meaningful. Birthright divided political power into five types. Land, which any character type could draw on, and one type suited to each of the Meta-class groups: Warrior, Priest, Rogue, and Wizard. Each character class was able to draw 0, 1/2, or 1 "regency point" from some combination of these power bases, proportional to the size (expressed as levels) of the power base. All classes drew 1 point per level of the province from land. Warriors (Fighter, Ranger) drew 1 point per holding level from Law (military or order-keeping forces & institutions); Priests (Cleric, Druid) drew 1 point per holding level from Temples (religious institutions and people's faith); Rogues (Thieves, Guilders) drew 1 point per holding level from Guilds (legal or illegal, all trade/mercantile activity); Wizards drew 1 point per holding level from Sources (magical power points); Rangers drew 1/2 point per holding level from Guilds; Paladins drew 1/2 point per holding level from Temples and from Law. It is important to note also that, while some characters could not earn regency points from some types of holdings, it was still sometimes valuable to own them anyway -- Guilds provided Gold no matter what class owned them, as did Temples; owning Law meant that you could suppress some popular resentment no latter what class you were; and access to Sources could be traded to Wizards for favors. Also, Law holdings were required to muster troops; you could "borrow" someone's Law holding for this purpose, but the other was under no obligation to allow you to do so. Multi-classed characters got the best of both worlds, a half-elf Fighter/Cleric could expect to draw 1 point from Law and 1 point from Temples. However, Cerilia was not so open to some of this as you might think. The elves did not have any Clerics or Druids, and did not have Temples. Most active regents were humans, and could not be multi-classed (although they could be double-classed). Birthright worked hard to make character level irrelevant to how effective a regent your character was. All of the mechanics were tied to your Bloodline strength, a numeric score that acted as a cap on the regency coming in, among other things. A 1st level Fighter and a 20th level Wizard, with the same bloodline, were almost equally effective in leading any given domain -- the only flaw in this was that the number of free actions you were allowed was tied to your character level, so the Wizard would get more. Birthright domains were most efficient when a band of allies of the appropriate classes divided the power bases in a realm among them: the Rogue controlling the Guild holdings, the Cleric or Druid controlling the Temple holdings, the Fighter controlling the land and Law holdings, and the Wizard controlling the Source holdings. That gave everyone in the party "something to do" in the overall government, an opportunity to be involved. Dividing the power that way was the most efficient arrangement, as no one was paying support costs for things they could not benefit from fully; but it was not required.</blockquote>

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